“Stop Building Facebook’s Brand” - I disagree
I disagree with this analysis pretty whole-heartedly. Facebook is, increasingly, a web infrastructure rather than a website.
While it’s limiting to hinge your web presence on facebook, it’s also a little foolhardy to hang out a shingle in the middle of nowhere on the web and hope that people come to where you are.
If you are trying to build your site user base for a specific end, yes, send them to your site. But if you are trying to promote your product or your brand, and your audience is on facebook, then by all means go to where they already are.
Especially these days when you’ve got facebook connect to help you join your facebook audience with the rest of your audience, and the coming of social search (the “like” button, etc).
My social media soul may be be darker than what remains of the Gulf of Mexico, but I still have a heart. So, I went and saw Toy Story 3 earlier this week. Before the movie began, as is custom now, I was bombarded by a number of commercials. As I watched the commercials, I noticed a large number of them ended with a Facebook URL. Not the URL of the company or the product that was being advertised, but a Facebook vanity URL.
Marketers always say to go where the people are, and Facebook certainly dominates the web and social media scene. There’s nearly half a billion people on there, and they spend an average of 6 hours on there a month. If that isn’t your best chance at getting somebody to look at your product online, I don’t know what it.
However, you give up when you start advertising your Facebook page rather than our own page. When I don’t read your unique URL, I read “I don’t care about my official website.” I also read, “I’m too lazy to make my website interesting.” Or I read, “I hear this Facebook thing is popular and I should get on there just in case.”
Whatever I read, I don’t read any reason to go to your Facebook page over your website. Facebook isn’t searched as well as your website, so users have to turn to other sources to get the content they are looking for. Facebook limits the interactions you have have. While some of them may be useful, most stifle your chance to make truly creative content that isn’t run of the mill.
I’m not asking you to give up your Facebook page. Don’t stop updating it with relevant information. But Facebook should not be the pillar of your web strategy, and it should not be the first place you send new users. You can’t control Facebook, and Facebook loves to change the rules in the middle of the game.
Stop and think where you want people to end up. What is your goal? Is it easier for your users through Facebook, a Google search, or something else. If Facebook is part of that strategy, are you going to put your Facebook page over your domain?
When you put Facebook first, you build Facebook’s brand first, then your own. Can you afford to be secondary?
